You Could Say She Has An Individual Style
by OzQueene
Summary: There was no stopping her desire for knowledge and experimentation. One shot / complete.


**Notes:** A plot bunny! What can I say? I've held off on posting this for ages because I'm not sure anyone would be interested enough - but then, with Captain Planet being such a small fandom, there's a danger of it starting to become "same old, same old", so I figured anything with a few different characters should be posted!

Title taken from _Plastic Fantastic Lover_ by Jefferson Airplane.

* * *

High school bored her.

The restrictions and rules and the simplification of Everything Considered Interesting frustrated the hell out of her and prompted her into disobeying the rules so often expulsion was a regular threat. She survived on the promise of more money for the school from her father.

_My daughter caused another evacuation after messing around in chemistry class, you say? Here, have thirty grand and let's pretend it never happened._

He was too busy to worry about it too much. She was given free reign and that's the way they both liked it. That's the way it suited them and that's the way it worked for them.

The teachers were beside themselves. She was obviously bright – scarily so. The calculations and formulas scribbled in the margins of her text books baffled them and frightened them. They tried in vain to reel her in.

_Just stick to the basics, Barbara. There's no need to get cocky._

They begged her to spend less time messing around with experimentation and more time on the curriculum she would be graded on.

But studying something that had already been discovered and worked out by other people didn't interest Barbara Blight. She wanted to enter uncharted territory. She toyed with various chemicals like a child playing with coloured water. She studied the formulas and equations for things like nitrogen triiodide and thermite, terrifying her teachers and causing her classmates to jump and grow pale at the slightest bang or crack which emitted from her corner of the laboratory.

The school began to forcibly restrict her from entering the chemistry labs, even during class time. The teachers 'excused' her from study, knowing she had the knowledge to pass the classes but lacked the ability to focus on the standard provided. She was sent on useless errands, given detentions, directed towards the library.

She began to whine to her father. Pouting and begging him to do something. She asked him to build her a chemistry lab of her own. In a rare display of discipline, he answered no.

_I don't want to return from a business trip to find the house a smoking ruin, Barbara. If you're going to blow something up, I'd rather it be the school._

He wasn't entirely sure what he was going to do with his eldest daughter once she graduated high school. He wasn't sure he could convince her to go to college. School had been an expensive but worthy babysitter. Throwing money at the problems his daughter created was easier than dealing with her himself.

He began to encourage her to take up other interests in an effort to distract her from her boredom – something which was causing him a headache of his own.

_It's not wise to become a one-trick pony, my dear,_ he told her.

She liked the idea of expanding her horizons, but the school had become so paranoid about allowing her any leeway, she found it difficult to gain access to anything new.

_Just sit in the library, Barbara. Wait for the bell and for heaven's sake don't touch anything._

* * *

She was wandering the halls one afternoon, avoiding a dreary hour of sitting in detention, when she was witness to a new delivery.

Her interest peaked when she realised the stock being wheeled in hadn't been donated by her father.

Computers weren't exactly new, but neither were they something the general public seemed interested in. Blight had heard of them but she'd never really chased an interest to learn more about them, preferring instead to develop and witness immediate reactions to something. Typing codes and formulas into a box seemed rather dry and boring when you were used to acrid smoke and toxic poisons.

She watched as eight bulky computers were set up around the newly-renovated room (_that_ was certainly courtesy of her father), watching the way the wires ran together and the way the screens flickered to life.

She decided she was intrigued enough to enter. She sauntered into the room, hiking her uniform skirt up a little higher and unbuttoning yet another button on her shirt so it gaped at the front.

The new teacher was young and nervous. He'd heard stories of Barbara Blight already and he wasn't entirely sure he should be welcoming her into his classroom – particularly when there was nobody else there.

But she was practised with her body, tilting it this way and that and letting her shirt pull tightly across her curves. When she bent to examine a computer closely she was certain she heard him let out a little moan of despair and longing. He never once asked her to leave, and when she demanded that he show her the basic workings of one of the machines, he hastily sat down next to her and explained things in stammers and nervous giggles.

Blight let him touch her thigh as she questioned him. By the end of the first hour she was certain she could take this new technology and bend it and shape it to her every whim. She wasn't entirely sure what consequences she could inflict by toying with various lines of coding and lettering, but she was intrigued enough by the possibilities to return to the computer lab whenever she had the opportunity.

The teachers welcomed this new development with relief. As far as they were concerned, Barbara couldn't cause an explosion or kill anyone with a computer. They encouraged her to sit there in the dim room, scribbling away in her notebook and tapping thoughtfully at the keys, watching the little green cursor skip and dance its way across the dark screen.

* * *

The more she researched, the more Blight liked computer technology. One of the downers about chemistry (at least, the chemistry she had been allowed to expose herself to) was that it was so ancient. So many others had been there before her, toying with the same properties and liquids and powders, gauging the reactions that were created when elements were put together.

_This_ technology was developing and changing so rapidly she found it a challenge to keep up. She demanded that her father buy her a computer of her own. This time, he relented. What trouble could she possibly cause with a computer?

She slept very little, instead choosing to spend her time developing programs and codes of her own. She started studying the mechanics of the computer itself, adding new wires and monitors, building larger and more powerful machines.

Her father promised her a hefty monetary inheritance if she stayed at school and graduated. Her high school finals were barely a blip on the radar. She passed with flying colours, handing in each paper early and with a bored expression on her face. She waved away commendations and praise of her obvious intelligence and returned to the extensive basement of her father's house, lugging new casings and turbines down the stairs, adding to her growing collection of whirring equipment.

She knew precisely what she was working towards. There were others working on it too, and she knew that it had been already been achieved on varying levels. But she was going to outdo everyone.

_Artificial Intelligence._

* * *

Barbara Blight would chuckle to herself whenever she reached a new understanding or a new accomplishment. There were failures, certainly, but she had been blessed with a brain that was exceptional. She never really paused to consider it or to count herself lucky. She spent more time admiring her body than she did her mind. To Blight, anyone who didn't strive to understand the magnificent workings of science was an idiot not worth bothering with. She shunned the idea of working with others.

Hell, once she was done figuring out the complexities of artificial intelligence, she wouldn't _need_ others. For anything.

However, there were dramatic setbacks. An over-loaded electrical system caused a short circuit that ignited a gas line, resulting in an explosion that destroyed almost all of her equipment and half of her face. The shock, pain and subsequent scarring from the accident took its toll on her. She moved out of her father's house, using the money he'd given her after her graduation to buy a wide brick building with high ceilings. She stacked computers and monitors against the walls and slept on a cot in the corner.

She spent every waking moment bent over a keyboard, her fingers flying over the keys. She invested in a pair of thick gloves to prevent herself from electric shocks and unsightly calluses as she worked and twisted wires and casings together.

Three days before her 27th birthday, she stood back and gazed up at the central monitor. A green face, shaped by an impossible number of quivering pixels, gazed back at her.

He didn't have a voice yet, but she'd give him one soon. There were other developments she wanted, too. Aesthetic qualities to cater to her fancies rather than her ulterior motives.

He was far above anything else she was aware of. She was certain nobody else had achieved a program like the one she had in front of her then. With him, she could seize control of the highest organisations and influences, covering her tracks every step of the way. Worming her way in through the strictest systems using slick coding and malware.

_Malware. Mal._

Despite the opportunities in front of her, the first target she set her sights on was a despicably easy victim. Though the explosion had been an accident, she took great glee in destroying the gas company which had contributed to her horrific scarring. As far as she was concerned, natural gas was at fault, and its do-gooder supporters would be the ones to pay.

She was unconcerned with the amount of casualties. She watched through Mal's various security camera hacks as they all scrambled to shut off the gas and kill the flames. It took almost a full day and by the time the evening news came on, there were headlines calling it the worst environmental disaster in modern times.

She laughed and gazed up at the green pixels on the computer monitor adoringly.

_I wonder if we can top it, Mal baby?_


End file.
